The 1st of September is an exciting day for the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland: It is the day we go live with our website www.ercs.scot, so please circulate to your networks. Enquiries for advice can be submitted on-line and we will acknowledge within 3 working days; It is the day we adopt our constitution and formally appoint our trustees: Mary Church, Clare Symonds, Lloyd Austin, Deborah Long, Ben Christman, Aedán Smith, and Campbell Gemmell as Chair; Last, but not least, we are also delighted to welcome Emilia Hanna as our part-time advocacy officer and Emma Donaldson as our part-time administrator. Emilia and Emma will join Ian and Shivali for the next phase in our journey to advance the right of everyone to live in a healthy environment.
August update
Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) is recruiting for a part-time Advocacy Officer to support our programme on Advocacy in Policy and Law Reform. This is an exciting opportunity to influence the work of the Human Rights Taskforce on the incorporation of the right to a Healthy and Safe Environment into Scots Law. You will lead on developing a LINK response to inform the Taskforce’s proposals and work with LINK members to build and present an evidence-base of good practice and argument for incorporation.
July update
Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) will be recruiting a part-time admin worker (4 hours a week) to support our work until the end of the year – details will be circulated in the next couple of weeks. As part of our programme on Advocacy in Policy and Law Reform, we will soon be playing a significant role supplementing the existing efforts of LINK members to bring Scotland into compliance with the ‘access to justice’ pillar of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. In the same vein, we have produced a third information sheet in our Public Education programme, covering ‘Access to justice on the environment, and whether Scotland is providing it’. We continue to monitor Covid-19-related changes in environmental regulation and enforcement. Please contact us with examples, good or bad, or for further information.
ERCS receives charitable status
The Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) received charitable status as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SC050257) on 3rd July 2020.
June update
Now six months old, the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) has applied to the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator (OSCR) to become a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation, and all the members of LINK’s Legal Strategy Group have agreed to be the new organisation’s first charitable trustees when our application is approved, hopefully later this year. We also hope to be able to announce the names of ERCS’s first office-bearers before too long. A further strategy session recently considered ERCS’s programme on Advocacy in Policy and Law Reform, and how it fits with LINK’s wider governance and advocacy work and the previous work of the Legal Strategy Group. As part of this programme, ERCS helped Planning Democracy to challenge some of the temporary changes to planning rules rushed through by the Scottish Government in response to the Covid-19 crisis, which we think are likely reduce public participation in the short term. We are now monitoring other Covid-related relaxations in environmental regulation and enforcement, such as those introduced by SEPA, and would like to hear from LINK members about any similar measures that involve suspending or postponing environmental laws or standards in response to the pandemic, as well as any that are environmentally beneficial, and any impacts on your work as a result of such measures. Please contact us with examples. As Scotland moves towards incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights) are this month hosting a series of webinars on the State of Children’s Rights in Scotland. ERCS will …
May update
LINK Members will know that the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) came into being in January, with a mission to assist members of the public and civil society to understand and exercise their rights in environmental law. Working with the LINK Legal Strategy Group, the last three months have focused on the nuts and bolts of creating a new charity, agreeing our strategic direction and operational priorities for our four programmes of work: public education to increase awareness of legal rights and remedies in environmental matters; advice, assistance and representation to improve public participation in environmental decision-making; strategic public interest litigation to secure progress on key environmental issues; and advocacy in policy and law reform. We hope to launch our website in the summer along with our Advice Service and useful resources, including ERCS’s first information sheet on ‘Environmental information and how to obtain it’. Our advocacy programme includes work to address Scotland’s continuing non-compliance with the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. In March, the Compliance Committee to the Convention published their second progress review and concluded that the UK remains non-compliant in relation to the prohibitive expense of access to justice. ERCS will provide a briefing note on the implications for Scotland for the June LINK Bulletin.
Header image: 'Rainbow joy, Gadloch' by Emma Donaldson.
